For more than 100 days, members of New York's Fire Department, along with contractors, have been working 12-hour shifts in the recovery effort at the World Trade Centre. At least a quarter of the 6,500 workers have respiratory problems, with about 500 sick enough to retire. Lieutenant Mickey Kross, a firefighter who was in the north tower when it collapsed but miraculously escaped unhurt, has been there for the past month. This is his account of his shifts before Christmas.

Whenever they find a fireman or a cop, everybody stops work and they send a stretcher down even though what they've found would fit into a small shopping bag. The cops and the firefighters line up, the stretcher is covered with a flag, they take their hats off and carry it out.

It's very ritualistic. What they're finding is clothing - barely a trace of a human being. In a way, it's very peaceful there, almost Zen-like. The people are mixed into the dirt. Dust to dust is not just a saying now, it's become a reality.

One night I found a smashed up office chair; that was the only thing that stood out. Nothing has colour or tone anymore, it's all just this dull grey. We look but there's nothing solid except papers and office manuals. Sometimes it seems like only the bureaucracy survived.

You have to be alert down there. It's very dangerous. There's no goofing around. It's very easy to fall down into a crevice or get hit by one of these huge diggers or the trucks that cart the stuff out. When they pull a beam out, we have just enough time to rush in, see what we can see, and then get out of the way again. It's simple work; I work with a flashlight and shovel. You just move and look, move and look. It's a miracle that no one's got seriously hurt.

Last Thursday we were assigned to babysit a welder in the Banker's Trust building next to the World Trade Centre. You'd go into one office and it's perfect, like someone just left to go to the bathroom. The coffee and a half-eaten donut is there, the appointment book with everything dated 9/11. You go into the next office and there's a 10ft steel beam that came from across the street, through the window, and embedded itself through the floor like a spear.

It's the weirdest thing to see. One room's like a museum room, the next is gone. No floor, nothing... totally destroyed by debris that came through the window when the tower came down. There's even a couple of clocks that stopped at the moment the trade centre came down. Like time just stopped.

As I was leaving they finally found someone so I assisted with the removal. The guys removing the remains were really good at what they were doing. They have turned removing remains into an art form. I looked at it like a learning lesson. How they identified the person as a woman, what tools they called for. The person was imbedded in concrete and steel bars, so they had to take her out in pieces. They were doing this with their hands in the dark with just a flashlight, and just using their senses of touch, smell and sight. It was something to see.

We went down to the bottom of the pit where the towers were. Now it's just dirt and layers and layers of twisted steel. A couple of days ago they found a fire engine. It was flattened out but still the same length. There was no one inside.

Although the fires are all out, there's still steam coming out of cracks in the earth, like mini earthquakes. They bubble and crackle like Rice Krispies.

You don't want to step too close because it looks like the earth could open up near them. Then you've got these 30ft drops you gotta be careful of.

It's kinda' like being on a mountain range. You need to be careful of your footing. In a way it's a survival game. I don't mean to make fun of it, but it's the WTC reality show. Only we don't get a million dollar prize if we survive.

It doesn't feel good to be taking out somebody's rotting flesh but I'm doing what needs to be done and I feel good to be part of it. It's being done with such dignity that it feels like you're doing noble work.